


when i drink you in i can't breathe you out (it's like oxygen)

by jonghyun



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Not serious at all, but like, onew does magic on computers and it's kind of weird, onew is a very tired person, someone help him, taemin continues to be the reincarnation of the devil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonghyun/pseuds/jonghyun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Okay,” Minho says, and for a brief moment Jinki thinks he’s going to end it with, <i>That sounds fake but okay...</i>, but he doesn't. Instead it’s: “But how is giving a person who is already in love a love potion with DNA from the person <i>they’re in love with</i> going to change anything?”</p><p>a love potion au! everything goes wrong, but that's what usually happens anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when i drink you in i can't breathe you out (it's like oxygen)

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually a rewrite of a very old shinee fic [love potions 101: how not to use them](http://semecomplex.livejournal.com/17635.html) that i wrote many, many years ago. the original fic is actually jonghyun/key, but since jongyu is my otp, here we go instead. and i made it about 10k longer, because that's just what i apparently do now.
> 
> the title was supposed to be "love potions 102: when you retake the course but still fail" but after everyone told me no one would get the joke, here's a throwback to baby!shinee.

Jinki would be all for this plan or whatever if he didn’t have a presentation in half an hour on the progression of his senior thesis. Really.

Somehow, by some weird type of black magic or whatever (Kibum’s good at that shit, right?), he’s summoned half of the people that know Taemin to the university cafe to talk about Taemin’s not-so-secret crush on Kim Jongin, the campus’ resident hottie. (Jongin doesn’t know this, of course, because anyone who makes an attempt to let him know of this fact just oh-so-happens to spontaneously combust.)

“Taemin doesn’t even _have_ feelings,” Soojung says, flipping over a page in her notebook. Finally, someone with intellectual thought and reasoning. Also the idea of Taemin in love is vaguely horrifying, and Jinki doesn’t want to think about that. “This won’t work, and you’re all idiots.”

“When I need your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Kibum replies coolly, and Jonghyun giggles all high pitched like he usually does, which is annoying because Jinki definitely does _not_ like that giggle. He doesn’t.

Thank god this is about Taemin and not him. Maybe he should appreciate the little victories in life.

Kibum takes a long drag of his Americano (disgusting) like it’s the only thing that’s keeping him alive at this very moment (it probably is), despite the fact it’s only ten in the morning. “Taemin has to man up,” he says. “He needs to own up to his feelings. The ones he has, because he’s human, and humans have those.”

“Okay,” Minho says, and for a brief moment Jinki thinks he’s going to end it with, _That sounds fake but okay..._ , but he doesn't. Instead it’s: “But how is giving a person who is already in love a love potion with DNA from the person _they’re in love with_ going to change anything?”

“Because he doesn’t think he’s in love! Or, well, he’s in denial about it. So when he doesn’t see any change happening, he'll realize he's in love. More importantly though, Jongin will see it.”

“What if he thinks that’s the love potion working?”

“Someone else will drink it! And then see the differences in the symptoms,” Jonghyun adds, because of _course_ Jonghyun would be all for this plan. Kim Jonghyun, the most romantic yet least romantically involved person that Jinki knows.

Kibum doesn’t seem to care about any of this, if the wave of his hand is an indication. “It’ll be fine. We’ll give him a reversal and when it doesn’t do anything then he’ll really know.”

Minho gives them a skeptical look, but after considering his options, doesn’t argue. Good idea. “Okay, well good luck. Still thinks it’s the dumbest idea you’ve had yet.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Kibum cuts him off, “we haven’t exactly made the potion yet. I’ve got most of the ingredients; Jonghyun just needs to get some of Jongin’s hair, somehow. If he can do that before Thursday, we can get started on Friday night.”

Jonghyun grins and pounds his chest. “I’m on it like Donkey Kong! ...It?”

Jinki pats Jonghyun on the arm for the attempt. That’s all that counts, right?

 

Jinki makes it out of his thesis presentation alive. Sort of. Well, he still has all of his limbs intact and his cauldron didn’t implode on itself, which was apparently already impressive enough for the Dean of Magic in Mathematics.

Again, the little victories. He’ll take whatever he can.

He’s got four messages, which is strange because that’s four more than he usually has, and is even more surprised when all four are from Jonghyun.

That’s mainly because Jonghyun doesn’t _do_ phones, and prefers to just ruin Jinki’s life and barge into his dorm room regardless of the state of affairs. Stupid RA privileges. He’s not even the RA of Jinki’s dorm. Actually, he’s not even an RA, he just works for ResLife.

 **From Jonghyun:** do you wanna go on an ADVENTURE with me!!!!  
**From Jonghyun:** it’ll be fun i promise  
**From Jonghyun:** omg wait you have your presentation now i HOPE YOUR RINGER ISN’T ON  
**From Jonghyun:** GOOD LUUUUUUUUUCK ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

He needs a nap. And a drink. But first a nap.

 

He wakes up to a knowing feeling in the pit of his stomach and the sounds of a distant-but-coming-closer falsetto and thinks _nooooooooooo_ , before bracing himself for the oncoming storm. That is, pulling his blanket tighter over his head. Though maybe he should have first reached for a shirt. Not that any of this is new to Jonghyun.

The door opens, and Jinki doesn’t bother looking to know that Jonghyun is standing in his doorway, probably either wearing an ugly neon polo shirt or an equally ugly muscle shirt. He looks disgustingly good either way, and Jinki doesn’t want to see it. “Lee Jinki hyung~”

“I’m sleeping.”

“And now you’re not. Let’s go on an adventure!”

“ _God_ ,” he groans, pulling the blanket over from over his head. A shirt is handed to him, and looks up to see-- yup-- That is the ugliest tshirt he’s ever seen. It’s neon orange. Thankfully the one _he’s_ given is a standard black university tshirt.

“Not me, but I could take a message,” Jonghyun says on beat, and shoves the shirt further in Jinki’s face.

“ _You_ wear it; your shirt hurts my eyes.”

“No, I don’t like your cologne.”

“You bought it for me!” Jinki whines, but takes the shirt anyway and pulls it over his head. Jonghyun had always cared Too Much about scents, and Jinki had cared Too Little, which meant that Jonghyun took it upon himself to get Jinki a cologne that _actually smells nice, not like expired alcohol_. “Get something you actually like next time. Now what is this mission?” he asks, even though he already knows, because there’s no way to survive more than a year with Jonghyun without being able to tell these things in advance.

“We’re gonna break into Jongin’s dorm. To get his hair. For the potion.”

Jinki groans, again, as they walk out into the hallway. “Can’t we just ask Taemin to let us in?”

“Come on man,” Jonghyun sighs as he closes Jinki’s door behind them. “That ruins the whole point of it being a secret mission. _Hey Taemin, can we come into your dorm building? Why? Oh we just want some of Jongin’s hair to make you a love potion, no biggie. Cool, thanks_.”

“Or we could just _lie_ ,” Jinki says. “Like normal people on a mission. _Hey Taemin, can we come into your dorm building? I was with Jongin earlier and left my watch in his room. Cool, thanks._ ”

“But that’s so insincere?”

Jinki shakes his head solemnly and lets Jonghyun lead them to Taemin and Jongin’s dorm building.

 

Jongin and Taemin’s building is the most secure building on the campus, due to the fact it’s for Corpus Magicians, and body magic is the strangest kind. Usually Corpi become doctors or dentists because of their abilities to be in tune with both magic and the body, but Jongin and Taemin are both the strangest of the Corpi and incorporate their body into dancing. Jinki doesn’t know the logistics of it, most of it seems to go over his head since he can’t do body magic anyway, as much as he would love to.

Jonghyun comes a pretty close second, being a Sonus Magician. Personally, Jinki thinks that his music is pretty magical without the actual magic, but with it is a different kind of feeling altogether. He first came into university with the intent to be a music therapist, but changed only one semester in to being a composer. They both come in handy. Jinki had an awful time last year with his job, his research, and his classes, and ended up having something of a meltdown halfway through the semester. Cue Jonghyun, ex-wannabe therapist and current wannabe composer, and manages to quite literally sing this anxiety away with a song he composed just for Jinki. _Romantic._ Jinki wishes he could do _that_ whenever he wants. He wonders if it would actually work on himself. He should ask Jonghyun.

Jinki’s just like the rest of the world, stuck to using pencils and pens and being a regular old Scriptus Magician. There’s nothing quite like writing transfiguration equations with all sorts of material: ink, water, blood, sludge, the like. Jinki’s personal favorite (and the subject of his thesis) is writing in computers. Electronic magic. Who would’ve thought? It doesn’t get boring, because Jinki makes _sure_ it doesn’t. That’s what he does: he’s an inventor. 

Which leads them back to the point. There is a door to a dorm he’s not allowed access in and Jonghyun seems to have all the answers.

“How do we get in?” Jinki asks once they’re standing in front of the fingerpad of the building. “They know your magic. And mine.”

“It’s pretty easy, which should be worrying, but we can think about that later,” Jonghyun says cheerily. Jinki should’ve known Jonghyun really _does_ have all the answers. How does one be a romantic and a delinquent at the same time? (Watch Grease a lot, he guesses.) “You’re gonna start singing, and then I’m gonna sing, so we confuse the system and I can unlock the door.”

“That’s stupid,” Jinki says as a reflex, even though it’s actually pretty genius, and he’s confused why no one has ever thought of that before. “What do I even sing?”

Jonghyun shrugs, looking around to make sure no one’s looking. It’s almost ten, which means people are either in out with their friends, already in their dorms, or in the library. If it were Jinki, he’d be in class or in the library. If it was Jonghyun, he’d probably be getting food or composing music. “Just sing anything. Well, it has to be something that no one’s ever heard before, so make up a tune. Oh, wait, you should sing that song I showed you - the one I composed. That doesn’t sound like anything popular.”

Jinki wants to tell Jonghyun that he doesn’t remember what it sounds like (he composes _so many songs_ ), even though he knows exactly which song he’s talking about, and oh god, Jinki needs to be a little more honest with himself. Whatever, it’s fine. Just _sing_ , Jinki.

He softly whistles out a few measures of the song Jonghyun showed him last year and is surprised at how well he remembers it, even if he’s not sure of the tone or anything. Maybe he doesn’t remember it that well. Jonghyun never gave him the full song, instead saying that he needed to perfect it before he could show anyone, but it was okay for now, because it was Jinki. What a stupid _romantic_. If Jinki didn’t know any better he’d think he actually meant that it was because it was him.

He feels a little bad for butchering Jonghyun’s song, but he doesn't look like he’s paying attention as he whispers something into the fingerprint display, which goes all wonky and starts beeping.

Then the light turns off and the door clicks open, and Jinki stops singing so he can breathe a sigh of relief. “How often do you do this?”

Jonghyun smiles at him innocently as he pushes the door open. “How do you think I get into your dorm?”

“Wait, you mean every time you’ve come to my room was you _breaking in_?”

“Well, yes. Or someone else lets me in. It’s not like you ever reply to your messages. Usually people just let me in though.”

“It’s not like you ever _send_ messages. Or use your phone.”

Another day, another pseudo argument. Jinki’s been in this situation more than enough times, though usually it happens in more socially acceptable places, like the student center or an empty classroom, _not_ when they’re breaking into someone’s dorm.

Not that this is very dramatic, seeing as Jonghyun waves to a girl passing by as they head up the stairs and into the hallway. Jongin’s door is on the other end of the building, and Jonghyun opens it easily. “He never keeps it locked,” he sighs, sounding a little disappointed, but honestly, there’s no need when you have your own security dog.

(Taemin’s room is next door.)

The last time Jinki was here was last year when he offered to tutor Jongin in a required math class. He’s glad to know it hasn’t changed even a little since then. “Well,” he says, “Let’s get to it. Hair.”

 

It takes almost an hour before Jonghyun reappears from underneath Jongin’s bed with a strand of blond hair. “I did it! For someone so unclean, his floor is spotless. I found this in his Calculus textbook.”

“Taemin probably bullies other people into cleaning their rooms. But good job? Let’s get out of here now, classes end in fifteen minutes.”

Jinki pretends to close one of the books on Jongin’s desk like he’s glad to be leaving, but actually he probably spent the last ten minutes avidly reading theories of magic fingerprints and how to replicate them.

“Let’s get coffee,” Jonghyun says, skipping out of Jongin’s dorm room. “You have to stay up all night to do that thing, and I can’t sleep anyway.”

“ _That thing_ ,” Jinki echoes duly, thinking about his senior thesis. It is technically true. The presentation was today, and so tomorrow he needs to gather and submit all of his presentation materials to his supervisor. He could’ve been doing that now, if it weren’t for Jonghyun and his antics.

 

Jonghyun might like him. (Or he might not?)

Jinki likes to think that Jonghyun likes him. Maybe. At least has some type of very fond spot for him, be it platonic or not. The problem is, a) Jinki is a coward, b) but does Jonghyun _really_ like him?, and c) does he really wanna ruin this nice balance of whatever it is they have, because who really knows if it’ll be better or worse? Certainly not Jinki. Which brings us back to point a) he’s a coward.

Well. He doesn’t think he’s a coward. There’s nothing cowardly about refusing to confess to your crush. Crush seems too _light_ of a word. He fell for Jonghyun in their senior year of high school, and now they’re in their senior year of university. Way too light.

“Can you pass me the highlighter?”

“No,” Jinki says as he tosses the bright pink marker over his shoulder. Jonghyun laughs, until it hits him in the head. Jinki’s not sorry at all. (Well, he kind of is. It didn’t hurt him, right? Jonghyun doesn’t sound hurt.)

They’re both sprawled on the floor of Jonghyun’s dorm, because the Sonus dorms are so much nicer, and because of their nature, all have soundproof walls. Not that they’ll need it, but it’s better than pulling an all-nighter in Jinki’s soundproof-less dorm, especially on a Thursday night. Jinki still has to finish writing up the rest of his summary and things he further needs in order to finish his thesis, which, god knows how long that will take. But at least the has all the data so far quantified and organized. Magic may be useful, but computers can actually be interpersonal.

“Do you think the love potion will work?” Jonghyun asks at some point, when Jinki’s taken a break from writing and has been playing Tetris on his phone.

“Hm? For Jongin?”

“Yeah,” Jonghyun says, rolling over. “It seemed too easy, getting that strand of hair.”

Jinki also rolls over, so that he’s leaning over Jonghyun. “Well, the point of it is to not work, right? He’s already in love with Jongin, so when he drinks it, nothing should happen. I guess someone else would have to drink it too, then. As like, a control? Y’know, experiments have the control group and the experimental grou-”

“I get it, smarty,” Jonghyun grins up at him, the whites of his teeth showing, and Jinki’s heart stammers in his chest. “I guess I’ll be the one to drink it. Or maybe you can. Do you wanna do it?”

Jinki wrinkles his nose. “Soyu made me drink a love potion once as a dare in my freshman year. It tasted really bad. Wait, how are we gonna even get him to drink it?”

“We’ll spike a drink! That works, right? Maybe I’ll hypnotize him. Hey, do you wanna see the new spell I learned? I can hypnotize people now. Well, kind of. I just make them really dazed! Like a _siren_. I’m a siren, hyung. Buy me a mermaid tail and I’ll lure people to their deaths.”

“Please don’t hypnotize me,” he squeaks, needing very much to get away from this position they’re in. Jonghyun moves animatedly when he’s excited, and their faces are way too close for any sort of grand actions. He rolls back over to his laptop and laughs at Jonghyun’s disappointed face, pretending to reach over to his coffee cup (his third one). “Did you really think I’d let you daze me or whatever?”

“You mean I don’t dazzle you already?”

“Dazzle and daze aren’t the same,” he says, managing to keep his cool. “And you do neither.”

Jonghyun sniffs. “I’m definitely going to make you drink the love potion. Be the _control_ or whatever.”

“I do like control,” Jinki says thoughtfully, putting a finger to his chin, and Jonghyun throws his hands up in the air and groans.

Sometimes Jinki _does_ win.

 

For some reason he thought that Jonghyun and Kibum would call everything off as one giant joke, as usual. But they don’t.

So now Jinki’s stuck in the potions lab on a Friday night when he could be at a bar with his _other_ friends, who don’t try to drug people, having a good time.

Friends don’t let friends slip their other friends love potions for their other-other friends. (Duh.)

“I’m pretty sure this is illegal in two countries,” he quips, and takes a cautionary look out the window. The first mistake to everything is choosing the lab on the first floor for an experiment they’ve never done before and don’t know if it’ll explode or not.

Minho snorts, the only other person in the room with rational thought. “Two? That’s being modest.”

He takes a look around them. The only people that decided to show up is Minho, Kibum, Jonghyun, Chanyeol, and Joonmyun. Jinki makes sure to keep this list in his head for future reference, in case he needs to blame anyone for what happens.

“Hey, I could just kick you out, if you want,” Kibum threatens, using a dropper to add in two droplets of some purple liquid Jinki would never drink. “Shut up and watch. Where’s Jongin’s hair?”

Jonghyun takes a tiny plastic bag with a single strand of blonde hair out of his bag. “You have no idea the lengths I went to to get this. I looked through all of his textbooks, and found this random blond hair in his Math textbook.” At Jinki’s _ahem_ , he corrects himself. “The lengths _we_ took to get this. We, y’know. Jinki and I. Bonnie and Clyde. Superman and Lois Lane. Batman and Robin. Joker and Harley Quinn. Sherlock and Wats-”

“We get it, thanks,” Minho says, rolling his eyes. Chanyeol snickers on his left, and Joonmyun pats Jonghyun on the back. “What’s next on the list?”

“Are you sure? I have a few more pairings to list off.”

Kibum gives him a look that has him shrinking away into Jinki’s side. “Just put the hair in already.”

Jonghyun drops the strand of hair into the cauldron, and the liquid inside bubbles and spews up into the air, then settles back down into a boiling pit of green liquid.

“Now what?” Joonmyun asks and takes the spellbook from Kibum. “Is that it? I thought there were more steps to this. Aren’t love potions supposed to be really complicated?”

“Well,” Jinki says. “Our goal is to get a confession out of Taemin, not ruin his life, so this is the really simple three hour-long love potion.”

Chanyeol grins at everyone. “But still illegal, right? Anything longer than fifteen minutes is illegal.” Jinki’s not sure why he’s grinning as he says this.

Kibum looks over Joonmyun’s shoulder and into the cauldron, disappointment etched across his face. “It’s supposed to turn pink,” he says. “Why isn’t it pink?”

“Apparently you’re supposed to say the magic word,” Jinki replies. He puts the book down and looks at Jonghyun. “What’s the magic word?”

Jonghyun puts his hands up in defense, asking, “How am I supposed to know?”

“It’s your book! You’re the sound magician. Make something up then.”

“I - uh, um. Kazaam!” Jonghyun shouts, and he and Kibum both watch the cauldron intently. Nothing happens. _Great_.

“Maybe you used the wrong magic word,” Kibum says. “How about abracadabra?”

“Abracadabra!” Jonghyun shouts. The liquid in the cauldron is still a bubbly green, gooey and not at all pleasant. Maybe this is a sign. Jinki is convinced that this is a sign, even though they spent so much time on this already. They broke into Jongin’s dorm, for god’s sake. (And got out unscathed by Taemin.) “Are you sure it was supposed to turn pink?”

“That’s what the spellbook said,” Kibum frowns. “Why do you suck at this?”

“It’s not my fault! Baekhyun gave me this book, go ask him!”

“Let me try,” Jinki interjects, swatting Kibum’s hand away from the book to lean over it. “Alakazam!”

Almost instantly, the cauldron starts to heat up, and all of them take a step back in alarm, because _that_ wasn’t written in the spellbook, only for it to suddenly freeze over. That wasn’t written either. This is a very bad idea.

Minho takes a bold step towards it. “So... was that supposed to happen?” He taps the ice. “I think it’s a dud. Back to the books, I guess.”

The ice cracks under his fingers and Chanyeol manages to scream, “ _Duck!_ ” before it explodes, shards of ice flying in all different directions and Jonghyun hides behind Jinki, who blocks them both with his arms and hands before grabbing Jonghyun’s wrist and tugging him downwards. Minho ducks under the lab table and Kibum, Joonmyun, and Chanyeol drop to the floor.

After a solid two minutes of sitting on the floor wondering when the coast is clear, Joonmyun slowly gets back onto his feet and motions for everyone to join him.

When they all are back up, a foam glides lightly over the cauldron, sparkles drifting among the liquid, which is a bubblegum pink color.

“Woah,” Jonghyun says. “This is so cool. Was this not the best idea we’ve had yet?”

“Best idea yet,” Kibum agrees, and they high five.

 

“You’re bleeding,” Jonghyun accuses, when Jinki excuses himself into the hallway. “Don’t think I didn’t see.” He should’ve known Jonghyun would follow him.

“I hope you saw, considering I was your human shield,” he jokes, but Jonghyun doesn’t look like he buys the humor. Jinki doesn’t either, but he likes people worrying even less.

“But did you die though?” Jonghyun asks, grinning. At Jinki’s look, he relents. “If Taemin was here, he could do magic and fix it,” he sighs, reaching forward to look at Jinki’s bleeding forearms. There’s multiple scratches going down the side where he blocked the ice shards pelting them, although none of them feel very deep. It could be worse.

He pushes Jinki into the next lab room, and fishes the first aid kit from under the eye wash station. “You know it’s not that serious,” Jinki says, plopping onto a lab stool. “It’s like, cat scratches or something. Minus the rabies, and even the infection! Because it’s just ice. Aren’t Kibum and the others waiting?”

“They’re too excited that the love potion works,” Jonghyun replies, looking at the scratches. “I don’t know how to do this. The scratches are scattered everywhere, this is too big but also too small for a gauze. Do I just put a bandaid on each one? Should I wrap it?”

Jinki laughs, grabbing the alcohol wipes. “This first, then you can wrap it. Thank god you’re not a doctor.”

“I’m not a Corpus Magician anyway,” Jonghyun sniffs, ripping open the alcohol swab. The first swipe has Jinki wincing, and Jonghyun smiles apologetically at him. “I can’t sing your injuries away, though they would be pretty cool.”

Jinki hums thoughtfully. “I think you can. Maybe not physical injuries, but you know.”

Jonghyun’s smile turns a little smaller, a little more private, and Jinki looks out the window to the moonlight filtering through the window. Neither of them talk about the reference to Jinki’s mental breakdown two semesters ago.

After a moment, Jonghyun looks down at his handiwork and grins proudly.

Jinki does not.

“Ta da! Good as new. It looks like a real cast. Wow, maybe I should be a doctor.”

“Thank god you aren’t,” Jinki says, looking at the poorly tied wraps. He’ll probably do it himself again later. (He’ll probably just take them off later.) “Let’s go back to the others before they think we’ve ditched them.”

Jonghyun looks pleased regardless. “Nah. There’s no way I would ditch the Best Idea Ever.”

Jinki just sighs.

 

“BEST IDEA EVER,” Jonghyun shouts as he retells the story to Minseok. He doesn’t look like he thinks Jonghyun and Kibum’s plan is the ‘best idea ever’, but at Jinki’s aggressive gesturing over Jonghyun’s shoulder, he doesn’t question it. _It’s not worth it_ , he mouths.

Minseok does ask though: “How are you going to get Taemin to drink bubbly pink shit?”

“Um, sorry, what was that?” Kibum says suddenly, putting his hand next to his ear. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the BEST IDEA EVER.”

Jonghyun and Kibum high five. Minseok and Jinki exchange glances and sigh.

Jinki orders at least two more coffees to deal with the headache he’s going to have. And then another, for the headache he’s going to get from the two coffees. Maybe he’ll find a way to shoot himself up with caffeine. Maybe.

 

After three more attempts to rationalize that _Taemin will not drink this weird pink stuff_ , Jonghyun finally calms down. Kibum either does not care or has some deliberate plan that he’s not sharing with anyone. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

“It’s not that difficult,” Jonghyun says, stealing a cucumber off of Jinki’s plate. “Taemin will probably get a soda or something, and so the color of the soda will mask the pink. And if it doesn’t, I’ll just bring food dye.”

“Huh.” Maybe he should stop forgetting how intelligent Jonghyun actually is. (This isn’t really intelligent, just common sense. Which Jinki seems to have less and less of.) He shoves a tomato into his mouth and chews slowly to organize his thoughts. “I guess so.”

Jonghyun seems to always just _know_ when Jinki’s brain malfunctions. Or when Jinki does anything, really (aside from have a crush on him for over four years), because he changes the topic easily. “Yup. How’s the thesis coming along?”

“Death. Pain. Misery. Agony. In that exact order.” Jinki rants. “Calculations from yesterday failed, I have to make a new draft, or switch the variables. Which means I’ll be in the lab all day today, again. And probably tomorrow. I need to prep new samples. And then I have to write up a new spell that matches the variables?”

Jonghyun nods along as if he understands, and although Jinki knows that he doesn’t, he appreciates it. Most people just try to change the subject when they realize Jinki can and probably will just start to ramble about things they won’t understand, but Jonghyun knows he has to talk to _someone_ about it. “Is your supervisor going to be there today?”

Underlying question: _Can I visit you in the lab?_ Usually Sunyoung is in the lab over, but she probably won’t mind if Jonghyun visits. Jinki has seniority anyway. “I don’t think so. I was just about to head over to the labs after finishing this. Come along?”

Jonghyun grins.

 

Jonghyun’s busy asking Jinki if the bridge sounds better in this octave or _this_ octave when Jinki finishes writing up the new spell to put into the computer.

“That one,” he says, after Jonghyun finishes singing them again. “The second one.”

“Good, I liked that one better too,” Jonghyun says, penning something down in his notebook. “What’s the deal here? What’s the spell gonna do.”

“We’re gonna find out,” Jinki says proudly, despite Jonghyun’s confused expression. “Okay, so, technology and magic are two sides of the same coin, right? So the samples are the same, and basically from the calculations from _those_ samples, I’m gonna make the computer actually cast the spell for me through _this_ machine, and then-”

His ramble is cut off by both his and Jonghyun’s phone simultaneously ringing. It’s a text from Minho, who simply states: _It’s going down TOMORROW. Be there or be squared. Except for Jonghyun. He’s already a square._

“What?” Jonghyun cries out. “I don’t even know what that means and I’m already offended!”

 

“This is it,” Jinki whispers dramatically, getting out of Kibum’s car. “It’s D-Day. If you mess up I’m never forgiving you, because we’ll all probably be _dead_.”

The high school reunion. Well, sort of. They’ve never really parted, but then again, they’ve never been quite like the other kids, the ones who hate everyone they knew in high school and never want to speak to them again. (It really doesn’t help that they all go to the same university.)

“We won’t! See, look, it’s right here,” Jonghyun says, pulling out the tiny pink vial.

“Well gee, nice being discreet about it,” Kibum mutters and jabs Jonghyun in the side with his elbow. They walk into the restaurant where they’re all supposed to meet and find Minho and Taemin already sitting in a booth together. It’s been awhile since they’ve all met up like this, and Jinki secretly hopes they get to actually sit and talk and catch up with each other before they put this super secret villainous plan under way.

“Don’t mind us as we crash this smorgasbord of fun,” Jonghyun greets, grinning and ruffling Taemin’s hair. Taemin looks like he considers setting Jonghyun’s head on fire. “What’s going on?” he asks and sits down next to Taemin, across from Jinki and Minho. Kibum sits on his other side.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Taemin frowns. “Can we order food now? We’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

Well. Crazy mastermind plan or not, Jinki is definitely eating today.

 

Halfway into their meal, Kibum nudges Jinki under the table, who nudges Jonghyun, who nudges Minho. “ _Distraction_.” Kibum mouths to Minho, while Taemin is shovelling pasta into his mouth.

After a brief moment, Minho looks down, and then back up, with the worst attempt at looking upset he possibly could make. “Oh, I uh, oh crap.” Minho says aloud, and Jinki wants to sink into the floor because _god_ his acting is so terrible. Never become an actor, Choi Minho. “I think I left my wallet in my car. Taemin, do you want to come with me? Because... I think your CD is still in my car! You know. The one I gave you last semester.”

Taemin looks up, mouth full of food, and mumbles, “What? Oh, um. Yeah, okay.” After chewing and swallowing, he squeezes past Jonghyun and into the aisle with Minho. Once they’re gone, Jonghyun pulls the vial out of his jacket pocket and pops the cork off the top. “So does anyone know what’s actually supposed to happen? Has anyone looked up how this reacts with soda?”

Kibum looks at Jonghyun, who looks at Jinki, who just sighs and breathes out, “ _Jonghyun_.”

“Just kidding! I totally know what’s going to happen,” he says, even though Jonghyun definitely doesn’t. “Well, bottom’s up.”

He pours the bubblegum pink liquid down into Taemin’s soda, and they all watch it intently. The glass goes through a range of different colors, almost like a rainbow lava lamp, before it settles back into a transparent black.

“This better work or I will kill someone,” Kibum says, looking at Jonghyun. “Probably you.”

“Looks like it does what it was supposed to do. You _did_ put in Jonginnie’s hair, right? It was blond. We don’t want Taemin falling in love with himself, or something.” Jinki says, and they try to keep a straight face for a few moments before Jonghyun snickers and they all burst out into laughter.

He grins at the them all, absentmindedly stirring the straw in Taemin’s drink. “I want to see Taemin in love with himself.”

Jinki watches as Taemin and Minho come back a few moments later, and as they sit back down, Jonghyun flashes Minho a thumbs up and says something to Kibum, and from there another discussion begins. Taemin puts his CD case in the corner, sips his soda, and joins in the chat.

“No, but really, I thought I was going to die,” Kibum says, talking about that one time Sehun almost crashed his car. “Don’t ever let Sehun drive, it’s the worst decision you can make. Jumping into the Pacific Ocean without a lifejacket is probably safer.”

Taemin laughs as he reaches over to take a long sip of his drink, then replies, “He’s not that bad. He drove me to the bank once.”

“Three stop signs, Taemin. He ran _three_ stop signs.”

Jinki looks at his watch when five minutes pass, then ten, and then when the half hour mark passes, he looks up at Jonghyun, who thankfully notices and looks at Kibum, who looks at Minho.

No one knows what to do, because Taemin is still talking about his duo-TA office hours with Jongin, except nothing sounds very over the top and romantic. Then again, this is what’s supposed to happen, right? Part of the plan. Everything is going according to plan. This just confirms that Taemin is in fact in love with Jongin. This just means that...

Someone else has to drink it.

God, Jinki hates everyone. He’s pretty sure that there wasn’t ever a plan, and now that the pseudo plan that everyone thought was going to fail is actually happening, a lot of improvisation has to be done. He feels Kibum kicking Jonghyun in the shin under the table and sends him a distressed look. Jonghyun shrugs and mimes his confusion back.

“Is something happening?” Taemin asks from next to him, and Jonghyun laughs nervously.

“No, Kibum was trying to remind me of something. I said I was gonna leave early to help Soojung out with stuff, but I already told her I wasn’t gonna go. By the way, can I have a sip of your soda?”

For someone who is quite possibly the closest thing to Satan, Taemin is incredibly dense. “Sure,” he says and slides it over. Jonghyun glances at Minho, then Jinki, and takes a long drag from it until Taemin complains and he pushes it back over, wiping his lips.

Nothing happens. (Great.)

Minho and Jinki both exchange glances and shake their heads.

 _I feel fine,_ Jonghyun mouths while Taemin is looking at his phone. It’s a text from Jongin, Minho manages to convey with his awful body language.

Plan failed! Awesome. A great waste of time. Jinki knew this would happen. At least they got to create weird shenanigans and meet up with old friends, right? (Who is he kidding, he could’ve been in the lab now.)

Unless Jonghyun is also secretely in love with Jongin, then they somehow failed to create the love potion, which means that they’re now back at square one. Or at nothing. They could just pretend this never happened, let nature determine its course of those who are fated to be together and those who aren’t, and go on their ways. It’s what Jinki would do, at least. This is why he and Jonghyun haven’t gotten anywhere in the past many years that they’ve known each other for. He pretends to ignore this fact.

Dinner is over and now Kibum has drop off Jonghyun and Jinki, and Minho is stuck with Taemin until they all get back to their own dorms. “Wait, no,” Jinki says. “Taemin and Kibum should go together, they’re in the same dorm.”

“You can’t leave me with these two,” Minho groans, looking at him and Jonghyun. “I’ll go crazy. Jonghyun might _hypnotize_ me.”

Jonghyun grins, despite the obvious jab. “See?” he says. “I can hypnotize people. I’m a Siren.”

Kibum rolls his eyes and looks over at Jinki who just manages to not do the same thing. “Jonghyun, in the words of Minho, you’re a square.”

Jonghyun splutters, wide eyes and flailing hands, and Jinki can’t help but laugh at the way he stumbles over his sentence. “What does- How do- I mean, like- What does that _mean_?”

Jinki also notices that Taemin is very, very quiet. And when he looks over, Taemin is looking back at him, eyes unblinking. Whoa.

That’s kind of creepy. In the background he hears Jonghyun sputtering again. (“How am I a square? What’s a square!”)

“Taemin?” he asks gently, not sure if he should put his hand on Taemin’s shoulder or something. He doesn’t. “Are you okay?”

The bickering stops just in time (or maybe they’ve all suddenly realized that something isn’t right) for everyone to look at Taemin, who still hasn’t said anything, who is still looking at Jinki with wide, unmoving, unblinking eyes.

“Taemin?” Minho asks, and Taemin doesn’t look in his direction.

After a moment of silence and Jinki getting Very Nervous, Taemin announces: “You have really pretty eyes. Why haven’t I noticed that before?”

“What?”

 

After a moment of deliberation, Kibum calls up Jongin, and they all reassemble in the courtyard to figure out what the hell is going on. Taemin, unfortunately, ends up in the car with Jinki, and he spends the whole ride trying to pretend Taemin isn’t staring at him with those... those _moony_ eyes. It’s creepy. Taemin’s eyes are bright and shiny but also soulless.

“He... what?” Jongin asks, looking in between everyone, but especially at Taemin. “Why would you do that?”

Kibum sighs, then reaches forward to gently pat Jongin’s cheek. “You’re lucky you have such a pretty face to make up for the lack of critical thinking skills.”

“Unlike me, right?” Jonghyun asks, “I have it all.” He grins at everyone, and Minho just sighs and pats him on the head, because he’s tall enough to do that. Jinki wants to do that (dammit).

“You wish you had any of ‘it’,” Minho states blandly, then looks back at Jongin. “Taemin likes you. You like Taemin. Fake love potion that wouldn’t work was supposed to cure it all. Fake being that it wouldn’t work on Taemin because he _already likes you_. But apparently this happened instead.”

He gestures to _this_ : Taemin leaning up against Jinki, staring up into his eyes. Or, his ears really, since Jinki refuses to look at Taemin. Suddenly, Kibum rounds up on Jonghyun, and nearly yells: “This is your fault! You said you got Jongin’s hair. Unless you keep a stash of Jinki’s hair under your bed and got this mixed up, _explain_.”

“I- what? No! I just... Jinki hyung was with me when we got the hair! We snuck into Jongin’s dorm - sorry Jongin - and found a piece of blonde hair in his Calculus textbook. Jongin used to be blonde!”

Minho shakes his head forlornly. “Did I not say you’d screw this up?”

“Did you say Calculus?” Jongin asks, having just registered the entire situation. Jinki is convinced he can legitimately see the gears in Jongin’s head being oiled as they turn as everything dawns on him. “My Calculus textbook? The one under my bed?”

Jonghyun looks much more scared than he should. “Yes?”

“The Calculus textbook that used to be _Jinki hyung’s_? And that Jinki hyung used to tutor me in? When Jinki hyung used to be blonde? _That_ textbook?”

“Oh.” Jonghyun frowns.

“Oh,” everyone else echoes.

Taemin shuffles his feet and takes the silent moment as an opportunity to announce, “I love you, Jinki hyung.”

Everyone stares at Taemin.

“So,” Minho starts, clearing his throat. “About that reversal potion. Unless you wanna wait the two hours and a half we have until it wears off naturally.”

“Yeah...” Jinki trails off, watching Taemin rub his head into sleeve of his sweater. He’s kind of like a puppy. The kind of puppy that is the cutest, most fluffy thing in the world but then pees on everything and ruins your furniture and tries to attack your boyfriend. Why did it have to be Jinki? He’s never going to tutor anyone ever again in his life. Worst decision he could have ever made. Not even Jongin’s grin when he got an A on his Calculus final could make this any better. In fact, Jinki is just going to shave his head after this. No more love potions. There’s a _reason_ why they’re illegal. “No.”

“Well!” Jonghyun says, stretching his arms over his head, “time to get to work, right?” Time to break into the Chemistry labs! Again.”

As everyone heads west, Jinki realizes with a start (maybe because Taemin has now linked his arms around Jinki’s waist and he’s _really_ freaked out) that Jonghyun had also drank Taemin’s soda.

And Jonghyun is not mooning over anyone.

 

Kibum complains to everyone in a two mile radius about why his life sucks as they sneak back into the Chemistry lab building. Jinki gets very close to telling him that the whole thing from the start was _his_ idea, but after a moment, decides that he would like to keep all of his limbs together.

“It’s gonna be really awkward when Taemin realizes what’s going on,” Jonghyun says, pointing at Jongin. “Someone might not make it out of this building alive.”

“Some _one_ ,” Minho snorts, phone perched between his shoulder and ear. “You mean all of us? Now’s the time to see if your siren skills are real. If we die- Oh, noona? It’s Minho. Can you drop by the Chem labs? No time to explain, go down the ladder leading to the boiler room. Bring mint leaves.”

Jongin shuffles his feet and looks between everyone, waiting for someone else to say something, and Jinki is suddenly overwhelmed with the sympathy he feels for the poor kid. What a strange situation to find yourself in. (He does Not think about Jonghyun. He doesn’t. He can think about that all he wants later. Right now...)

Right now Taemin is staring at Jinki, and has been, for the past half hour with nothing but a big smile on his face, and that is possibly the most creepy thing he has ever experienced. He has no idea how everyone else can just _ignore_ this (though maybe it’s because it’s directed at him and not them. Dammit.).

“Hey,” Jinki says, remembering, “don’t you need Baekhyun’s spellbook?”

“Oh, good point. Taemin, wanna come?”

“No.” Taemin says pleasantly. “I like being here.”

Minho mimes gagging from behind him, but Jongin legitimately looks like he is going to throw up though, so Jinki volunteers him instead. “He needs a breather. Right, Jongin?”

“Huh? Oh, uh. Yes,” Jongin tries to say cohesively. It’s a good attempt for normal Jongin standards. “Let’s, um. Let’s go.”

This leaves Jinki, Kibum, Minho, and Taemin standing by themselves in an empty lab room. “So...” Jinki says after a moment, “who’d you call, Minho?”

“Minhye.”

Kibum’s head swings in Minho’s direction so fast Jinki thinks he might get whiplash. “ _What_? You called your _girlfriend_?”

Minho clearly doesn’t think this is a bad idea. Jinki doesn’t understand either. “What? She has mint leaves. We need mint leaves for the potion. I know that much about love potion antidotes.”

“We’re dealing with Taemin and Jongin’s love crisis - the last thing they need to see is your perfectly normal and healthy relationship.”

“As if Minhye _not_ being here would make anything different,” Minho huffs.

Jinki is quick to say, “He does have a point.”

Kibum guffaws at the both of them until the door slides open, revealing Minhye, still in her pajamas. “Am I late? Why do you need these- Oh.”

Halfway through her sentence, her gaze falls upon Taemin and Jinki, and she blinks, then looks at Minho. “Yup,” he affirms. “We botched a love potion.”

“Hi,” Jinki says, and she laughs, before actually entering the room and handing Minho a plastic bag full of dried mint leaves.

“Hi,” she greets back, and looks at Taemin. “For how long?”

“Just happened like half an hour ago,” Kibum says, then gently hooks a finger into the back of Taemin’s collar, and tugs him away from Jinki. Thank god. “ _We_ didn’t botch it, Jonghyun and Jinki did.”

“ _I_ didn’t ruin it! Jonghyun did. I just sat and read books.”

“That’s even worse,” Minhye says. “You let Jonghyun do whatever he wants. _Jonghyun_. No wonder he messed up.”

They all look at Taemin again, and he smiles brightly. “I would let you sit around and read books, hyung.”

A compelling argument, honestly. “Um. Thank you?” Jinki feels like a fish out of water. He’s only ever had to reject two people before in his life, and technically one of them had confessed just to tell him they already knew they were rejected, so that saved him the work.

“I think I hear them coming back,” Kibum says, and yup, Jinki hears a crash in the hallway before Jongin and Jonghyun both come stumbling in through the door.

“We got it!” Jongin says breathlessly, trying to regain his balance and use his brain at the same time. A hard feat, really. Jinki commends him. “It was under- Minhye noona?”

“Jeez,” she says, “I really hope not.”

Jinki actually laughs, and Minho snorts. “Don’t,” he tells her gently, and she shrugs.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this show on the road.”

 

They don’t actually make Taemin drink the antidote until they’re standing inside the lobby of Jongin and Taemin’s dorm, and after he does drink it, they all run like hell for their lives. “Tell us if it works!” Minho shouts over his shoulder, and they all disperse.

He hopes everything works out okay, or there’s gonna be a lot of dead people around campus.

In the meantime, he has to figure out what the hell is going on. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe Jonghyun didn’t really drink it, but pretended to. Maybe it actually tastes really disgusting. Maybe all of the potion sunk to the bottom of the drink. Or maybe it floated to the top and the straw didn’t get any. Or maybe-

God dammit. 

This is too much. Jinki should have never agreed to do any of this. Nothing good was ever going to come out of it, and he _knew_ that.

Maybe he should ask for a second opinion. An unbiased opinion. Like...

 

“Oppa, it’s three in the morning.”

“Oh, really?”

Soojung sounds tired. But not I-just-woke-up tired, maybe I’ve-been-up-and-don’t-like-that tired. Or I-was-asleep-and-then-woke-up-but-haven’t-gone-back-to-sleep tired. One of those. “Yes, really. What’s wrong?”

Now he feels bad. He didn’t realize it took literal hours for them to fix the entire mess. He also doesn’t really want to talk about it. Or maybe he does. Does he? He should think this over some more. “I can call back in the morning, if that’s bett-”

“What’s wrong?”

“I...” Deep breath. It’s like swimming. The hardest part is jumping into the water. “You’re close to Jonghyun, right?” he asks carefully. “Like, super close?” There. Water. Jumped into. Now he’s cold and uncomfortable.

“As close are you are to him,” she replies, just as carefully. He thinks she might already know what he’s going to ask. Dammit. “Why?”

“Uh... I was just wondering, you know. Um. How close am I to him?”

“What?”

“I mean!” God dammit. This was not how he planned this conversation to go. Not that he planned any of this. Maybe he should have. This is why Jinki always has a ten step plan out in his head before he does anything. This is why he was salutatorian in high school. “I dunno. You’re like his sister, right? His other sister, I mean. The not-Sodam sister. But like, does that make me... his brother?”

The resulting silence is so thick Jinki thinks he might suffocate in it. _Drown in it_. Maybe he should have brought a life jacket with this conversation. He would’ve thought that Soojung hung up on him (a very likely scenario), but he hears a stiff breath a while later, and then finally, Soojung replies. “I don’t think I have the answers you’re looking for, oppa.”

“I don’t _know_ what I’m looking for.”

“I think you do, though.” Jinki hears someone else’s voice in the background of Soojung’s side of the call before she sighs. “Sorry oppa, I have to go; I woke up Jinri. I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Uh, yeah! Sorry for calling so late. Sleep well!”

 

Dammit Jinki.

He always assumed he was comfortable with not telling Jonghyun about the fact he’s been _mooning_ after him for the past how-many years, but now that he knows that Jonghyun’s been doing the same, it’s _weird_.

Jinki’s a scientist, right? (He’s not, actually. But he will be! In a few months, when he graduates and gets hired, hopefully.) Scientists don’t just throw things together and hope it works, even though that is absolutely what he does in the lab. But this is different. Jonghyun’s not an experiment and Jinki doesn’t like to dwell on things he knows are stupid. So, he either gets his act together or runs around bothering more people and getting less done.

But here’s the dilemma. Does he _want_ to bring all of this to Jonghyun? Yes, there was a love potion with his hair and he’s sure that Jonghyun not reacting to it wasn’t actually some placebo effect that failed to work which means that Jonghyun _does_ like him. Love, even. That just sounds terrifying, and Jinki can’t place his finger on why.

“Jinki?”

He blinks himself out of his stupor, and turns over to face his apartment mate, Hakyeon, who’s standing in his doorway. “What?”

“You’ve been staring at your wall for ten minutes, and you have a meeting in ten minutes.”

“I- what? Fuck.”

 

“Do you ever look at something and wonder if you’ve fucked everything about it up before you’ve even started?” Soojung asks.

“If you’re trying to make fun of me and Jonghyun then I really don’t have the patie- Oh.”

Soojung looks up from her blank essay with a raised eyebrow and Jinki swallows harshly. Right. Not talking about him and Jonghyun. Not at all. “The rumors say _I’m_ the one that’s self centered,” she says pleasantly, reaching forward to grab his coffee. _His_ coffee. “I wonder when that changed.”

“Very funny,” he drawls, looking at his newly printed results (another botched around of samples. Great.).

He can feel Soojung staring at him. And drinking his coffee. “Do you wanna make a bet?”

“No. I wanna get a round of samples that _don’t_ fail.”

He hears her sniff. “Moody,” she grumbles, and then continues talking as if he’d never spoken at all. She is self centered! She is. She’s also doing this for him, he knows. But still. “Let’s take a bet. It’ll even be a two-step bet, so it’s more in your favor. If I can finish this paper on time, AKA in four hours, and your next samples actually work for your formula, you have to confront your problems. If I turn this in late, or they fail again, you can do whatever you want. But if I win, you have to. Have to.”

“Are you pitying me? Trying to make me feel like I need a bet _that_ one-sided to feel good about my situation?”

Soojung scoffs, then pushes his coffee cup back to him. “See, it kind of was, but now I’m just really offended you don’t think I can do this. So I’m going to win. See you in four hours, oppa.”

With that, Jinki groans and puts his face into his hands and breathes hard as Soojung packs her stuff up. Dammit, he didn’t mean to be so rude. If anything, he’s thankful it’s Soojung of all people who can handle his bad behavior. (But it doesn’t mean she _should_.) “Soojung-ah, I’m sorry, I’m just stressed-”

“Your coffee is disgusting,” is her final comment as the door to the lab shuts behind her.

 

He spends the next three hours cooped up with Sojin, Nana, Amber, and Taekwoon as they all study in the lab’s office. Jinki has his newest samples running in the machine with a newly written formula, so he helps Taekwoon with his practice exam.

“Three is a deflective number, right?” Jinki explains, scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. “So you couldn’t use that for a spell like that, it would just backfire.”

“Shield it with a seven,” Nana says, and Sojin nods in agreement. “That’ll power it up too.”

“I hate conceptual spells,” Taekwoon says, sighing at the exam. “What does this even do?”

Sojin leans over the table to read the question and grins. “It’s art!” she says. “They’re formulations for a light show.”

Taekwoon grumbles something softly under his breath (which shouldn’t make sense, but it’s Taekwoon), and puts his head on the table. Somewhere in the room, Jinki’s phone vibrates, and he leaves Taekwoon to suffer as he finds it.

“I love conceptual stuff,” Sojin tells Amber, who looks just as enthusiastic as Taekwoon. “It’s like history, but for math magic. You can’t _really_ understand one without the other.”

There it is. His phone is on top of the coffee maker, with Soojung’s name and picture flashing on the screen. “Hello?”

“How’d your samples turn out?” she asks, not even bothering to greet him.

“They’ll be done in a few minutes. How’s your paper?”

“I think this is first paper I’ve handed in on time this whole semester. You better start practicing your monologue now. Let me know if the formula works!”

The call dies and Jinki turns around to find everyone staring at him. “What?”

“Was that Soojung?” Amber asks, suddenly looking very awake. At Jinki’s slow nod, she laughs. “You better run, she’s been really excited about whatever it is you and Jonghyun are doing together. She told me it was a group project.”

“ _Group project_ ,” he states. “I- yes. That’s exactly what it is. I’m going to go check on my experiment.”

 

“Fuck.”

The lights on the machine all flash green, and when he opens it up, all of the vials are glowing neon blue. All positive readings.

“ _Fuck_.”

 

 **To Jonghyun:** are you free??  
**To Jonghyun:** if i have to straight up take taekwoon’s test for him i’m gonna go crazy

 **From Jonghyun:** lol  
**From Jonghyun:** your lab?

 **To Jonghyun:** nooooooo i need a break.  
**To Jonghyun:** come over? I have leftover soju.

 **From Jonghyun:** its 5pm  
**From Jonghyun:** ...  
**From Jonghyun:** give me ten minutes

 

 **To Soojung:** fuck you

 **From Soojung:** :^)

 

Jinki runs to pick up kimbab on the way back to his apartment and pushes Hakyeon out of the apartment to go save his boyfriend from losing any more brain cells.

“Are you gonna have sex?” Hakyeon asks as he’s pushed out.

“No! You just make things awkward.”

“ _Me?_ ” Hakyeon guffaws. “ _I_ make things awkward for _you_? I’m-”

“Just go!” Jinki whines. “Taekwoon’s waiting. The longer you wait, the more brain cells he loses. Sojin and Nana can only tame him for so long.”

Hakyeon’s finally pushed out of the door with an indignant yowl, leaving Jinki to his devices. Which currently only consists of kimbap and soju. An excellent way to ruin plans. Whatever. It’s not like Jinki has an actual plan.

There’s a knock on the door then, which is _way_ too sudden for Jinki to be prepared. Hakyeon just left! He probably even ran into Jonghyun leaving the dorm.

Again. The hardest part of swimming is jumping into the water. The pool is in front of him, he just has to get the courage to take the dive.

“It’s open!” he calls out and grabs plates from the cabinet and turns the TV on for background noise.

He hears Jonghyun come in more than he sees; a loud groan punctuates the mildly unbothered room, and Jonghyun’s huge boots clunk from cement to tiled flooring. Then - “Is that kimbap? You’re amazing, Lee Jinki hyung.”

“I know,” he says, grinning, and finally looks over to see Jonghyun smiling back and tossing his backpack down next to the couch. “So what makes you want to drink at 5pm?”

“What makes _you_ wanna drink now?” Jonghyun asks, then pauses, probably considers Jinki’s awful drinking habits (really, they’re fucking awful). “Just kidding, don’t answer that. _I_ had to tutor Sehun again, who apparently found out all about Taemin and Jongin.”

Jinki hasn’t even poured the first drink and he already feels like spitting everywhere. Too soon, not ready to jump in the pool yet. He’s barely even gotten his swim trunks on. His metaphorical swim trunks. Jesus, who made him a writing-based magician? “And how did that go?”

“Very annoying,” Jonghyun replies, accepting the small shot glass from him. “Very hard to keep on track. Doesn’t want to listen, but doesn’t want to talk either. Or sing. Just wants to make snide comments.”

They down their shots, and Jinki hands him a pair of chopsticks. “Do you wanna watch something? There’s a football game going on.”

Jonghyun snorts, grabbing the soju bottle and pouring another drink, then pushing it to Jinki. “For every shot I take, you have to take, like, three.”

Jinki laughs until he realizes Jonghyun is being completely serious about this. Once Jonghyun practically wrestles the shot glass into his hand, he gets stared at until Jinki brings the glass up to his lips. “Seriously? Why are you trying to get me drunk?”

“It’s because I already feel flushed,” Jonghyun admits.

Ah, right. He’d forgotten. Jonghyun has always had a shitty tolerance, due to his general dislike of alcohol and any sort of intoxicant, unlike Jinki who basically became an alcoholic and a chain smoker the moment he legally could. Something about being a burnt out genuis with too many expectations.

One of the defining moments of their college careers where the places they went to and who they hung out with in those places. Jinki spent more time in bars and behind clubs while Jonghyun locked himself in music rooms with people who were equally as artistic as him.

Jonghyun always managed to make him feel unexceptionally ordinary, in the right kind of way.

Jinki downs the shot, and Jonghyun grabs the bottle and instantly pours him another. Jinki gives him a sour look. “We don’t _have_ to get drunk,” he says. “At least eat something.”

“Okay, but you. Shot.”

Jinki sighs and tilts his head back and drinks. When Jonghyun looks satisfied and reaches for a pair of chopsticks, Jinki goes for the remote instead and turns the TV on to whatever can be most distracting. There _is_ a football game going on. Minho would be proud.

He turns around to Jonghyun downing a shot all by himself, which is rare unless he’s really had a bad day. Huh. “You okay?” he asks.

“You took too long,” Jonghyun whines, and puts the soju bottle in Jinki’s hands. “Come sit, eat. How was your day?”

“I just had _three drinks_ , but yeah, okay, I was the one took too long,” Jinki points out, laughing. He can already see the red flush to Jonghyun’s cheeks and holds back an even bigger laugh. “I had to unofficially tutor Taekwoon. It was annoying. I sent Hakyeon to go save him. I had a positive round of samples though!”

There they go, back into their usual routine of joking around.

According to Jonghyun, who heard from Minho who heard from Chanyeol who heard from Wonshik, Jongin and Taemin are happily dating. No one has approached them in the past week in fear of death, dying, or spontaneously combusting.

“I still can’t believe we did that,” Jinki says, after swallowing a piece of kimbap. “That’s the strangest thing I’ve done since like, sophomore year.”

“Now all you do is drink a lot constantly smell like cigarettes,” Jonghyun points out. “Hyuna told me she saw you at the bar by my apartment two weeks ago.”

“The one with the green curtains, right?” Jinki asks. “Yeah. I didn’t really drink much, though. I had to look out for Joon.”

Jonghyun hums and reaches for the water pitcher. “Did you ever think back in high school that you would end up like this? That _we_ would end up like this?”

Jinki laughs aloud again, but this time it’s hollow and sarcastic. There goes Jonghyun, entering his ‘philosophical mode’. “That I would go from having a song about how innocent and clumsy I am - thanks, by the way - to being the equivalent of a walking emotional wreck caught in time? Probably not.”

“You’re much better than you think you are,” Jonghyun says, as Jinki pours a shot for the both of them. “You’re honest and funny and don’t cheat others and, you know, _stuff_.”

“Stuff. At least I’m not Satan?” Jinki asks, and they giggle together as Incheon United scores a goal in the background.

“It _worked_ ,” Jonghyun says, after they down their shots. “They actually- one of them confessed and it was because of us.”

Now would be a perfect time to bring it up. Now would be _the_ perfect time to bring it up. The universe is just yelling at Jinki to ask Jonghyun what he wants to ask, what he’s been needing to ask, and get it over it. All the clues point to everything working out in his favor, so _why_ isn’t his mouth opening?

“Granted,” Jonghyun keeps speaking like Jinki isn’t a ticking time bomb in front of him, “there were some casualties. Minhye’s sleep, your sanity - whatever is left of it, a lot of the chem lab’s stuff.”

There are a lot of things about Jonghyun that Jinki will probably never understand. How he manages to deal with chronic insomnia, how he’s able to compose music that Jinki’s never heard before when everything else just seems to sound the same, why Jonghyun’s height is disproportional to his intelligence, why no one else sees that, how Jonghyun seems to shatter glass ceilings before Jinki can even discover them, _how Jonghyun is apparently in love with Jinki_.

Jinki is a scientist and a mathematician. 1 plus 2 equals.. Z? Nothing makes sense.

“Are you listening?” Jonghyun asks, reeling him from the subject of his interest to the subject of his interest. The human brain is so interesting.

“No,” he admits. “I keep thinking about something that happened.”

Jonghyun’s face goes from annoyed-but-amused to concerned. “Something today? Is that why you called?”

“No, it happened a bit ago.” Here goes. This is a strange diving board he’s on. He hopes there’s a life jacket, but knowing him, there probably isn’t even a floatie to save him. “I keep thinking about how two people drank one soda and only one of them had a reaction to it. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

His eyes flicker up to meet Jonghyun’s, which are wide and staring at him, shoulders rigidly straight. That’s funny, the back of his mind registers somewhere. Jonghyun is supposed to have really bad posture.

“That’s a stupid question,” Jonghyun says after a long silence (in which Incheon United scores _again_ ; Minho’s having a great time somewhere else on this campus right now), “and that’s what’s been bothering you this past week?”

Something about the way Jonghyun says that makes Jinki draw in a deep breath, reeling. He’s in the water, and it’s _everywhere_. “I - should it not bother me? I’ve been in love with you since before I knew anything about this shit world, and still loved you even _after_ learning that? Is it supposed to just be _easy_ or something?”

Drowning, he’s drowning. Jinki knows how to swim, supposedly, but apparently his conscious doesn’t care about that.

“I mean, _no_ , obviously it’s not easy,” Jonghyun says, as if Jinki didn’t just _pour out his fucking heart_ to him. “But it’s not like you’re alone? You make it sound like an accusation.”

He slumps in his hair, years of pent up frustration and emotional wear weighing down on him. “I’m so tired. What am I supposed to do now? What are _we_ supposed to do now?”

For once, Jonghyun, the resident romantic, has nothing to say. They sit there in silence as the football game goes into five minutes of overtime despite the score being 0-2. Some things just aren’t supposed to make sense, he guesses.

“We could,” Jonghyun hesitates, staring at Jinki, “you know, maybe use this moment to confess to each other? Like you’ve done for the both of us already? But maybe we could do that in a less angry way.”

“One with a more long-term solution,” Jinki agrees, a smile somehow finding a way back onto his face. This is a strange night. Evening. “But do we really have to do the whole confession thing again? That’s really tiring. I’ve already used up my life-metaphors to get to this stage.”

“ _Fine_.” Another moment of silence ticks by until Jonghyun suddenly snickers.

Jinki looks confused for a second but then joins in, and like a catalyst, they both end up laughing until Jinki accidentally knocks over the soju bottle and they both go scrambling for it. Jinki splutters and slaps him on the arm in between laughs. Jonghyun tries to shush him, but that also gets lost in the midst of their snickering.

“So now what do we do?” Jonghyun asks, trying to get himself to calm down. It doesn’t work.

“Well,” Jinki hums, “we could always go and bother Taemin and Jongin, now that we know we don’t die a painful death. And it we do, it would be a funny one.”

“I like this plan,” Jonghyun says, “let’s go.”


End file.
